A milestone has been reached in the rehabilitation of deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
The first deepwater drilling permit since the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in April 2010 was granted to Noble Energy for its Number Two Well in the Mississippi Canyon Block 519. The drilling site is some 70 miles south east of Venice, Louisiana.
Although 37 permits have recently been approved for shallow water wells, this is the first deepwater application that has been granted since the Obama Adminstration ordered a moratorium on all deepwater drilling in the Gulf until stringent safety regulations had been established.
The permit from the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE will allow Noble to create a bypass well to drill around plugs set into the original well when drilling was suspended in June last year as a result of the moratorium.
The well, which sits beneath 6.500 feet of water and had previously been drilled to a depth of 13, 585 feet, will now be re-opened under the latest safety standards for well design, casing and cementing. The permit heralds a milestone in the recovery of the deepsea exploration sector in the Gulf, although US executives fear the new regulations could boost exploration costs to uneconomical levels.